It’s 2024 and Lauren Olamina is 15 years old. She lives in a walled and gated suburb of Los Angeles. Water, food, and money are in short supply, and outside the wall people are waiting, trying to break in and steal the little they have.

Lauren’s father, the local minister, does his best to keep the community safe and together, but Lauren knows their shaky security isn’t going to last forever, and that she’s going to have to learn everything she can to help her survive on the other side of the wall.

This book details the brutal, stark, reality of a world on the precipice of anarchy and violence, but unlike many in the genre, it’s about far more than terror and loss. It explores subtleties of race and gender, and the slender threads that separate the middle class from the poor, and the poor from the destitute, and the wide gap that separate them all from the rich. It calls out corporate greed, takes a searching look at religion, and asks questions about the morality and necessity of funding space programs while people are starving. But it is also about empathy and maintaining our humanity under the worst of circumstances.

ABOUT THE AUTHOROctavia Butler has received multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, a James Tiptree, Jr. Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the PEN American Center, a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant, and has been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.